Mornings hard? Here's my 4-step wake-up call

If you're anything like me - especially this time of year - you'll find getting out of bed akin to prizing the back off a mobile phone, or working your way through Westfield shopping centre, 3pm on a Saturday. It's difficult. And I'm afraid I don't have the answer for how not to hit the snooze button. I do it and am trying, trying to break the habit. But you might like to know how, a little after dawn, I cut through that morning torpor. (Please note dear reader, that I do all four steps when I've got the time. The beauty of each product I've mentioned, is that they do the trick on their own.)

Here goes:

1. I fill the basin with hot water, throw in my flannel, three drops of Ole Henriksen Skin Inhalation Therapy 1 (£24.45, beautyexpert.co.uk) and inhale deeply. Its scent has the zip of a just-squeezed orange - in reality, it's a mix of tangerine, eucalyptus and peppermint - and cuts through my sleepiness, brilliantly. 2. I wring out my flannel, press and wipe it over my face and neck two or three times (inhaling, all the while). 3. I massage a couple of drops of Darphin's Tangerine Aromatic Care Facial Oil (£38, houseoffraser.co.uk) into my skin, and breathe in its uplifting scent. 4. A spritz of Eau d'Hadrien (£49, boutiqueperfumes.co.uk), from French perfumer, Annik Goutal finishes the process. Its light, cologne-like, citrus scent is one of the loveliest - every beauty editor's bathroom cabinet has one.

There's method in this: scent affects mood (and citrus scent, as you know, energizes it). When was the last time a smell (however unusual) catapulted you to a time, a place, a person or an experience - and with that a chuckle or a shudder? Probably quite recently.

Indeed, there are lots of studies into how and why this is so. And with them, increasingly credible evidence to support this idea - that smell affects our mood, psychology and how we behave. One thing, and this I learned from the American psychologist, Rachel Herz, an expert in scent psychology. How a smell affects your mood, generally depends on your first experience of it. And this might account for why so many of us find citrus smells so reviving. Remember your first bite into a lemon segment as a child? Its rip roaring kerching? Nothing like it! And until there's more conclusive research around lemons, it'll be the reason I'd like to give for why citrus scent makes for such a great, morning wake-up call.